


Through my enemy’s eyes

by Colonel_Moriarty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colonel_Moriarty/pseuds/Colonel_Moriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rather special ficlet.</p><p>Past Reichenbach, JohnXSebastian.</p><p>Nothing naughty, just a chance meeting in a pub and a few things are being told.</p><p>A few scenes were inspired by friends and ficlets I read.</p><p>Please enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through my enemy’s eyes

John didn’t manage to return home this afternoon. He had left the hospital at the usual time but his feet had decided not to carry him back to Baker Street. Back to the flat that felt so empty and devoid of life. That was still stuffed with the things Holmes had left.

Even now almost 3 months later John couldn’t bear to touch anything. Or throw anything away. Even the eyes were still in the fridge. He kept talking to his therapist but it didn’t seem to change anything. John Watson felt empty inside.

Hollow.

As if somebody had carved out the best part of his soul and taken it away.

But Holmes wouldn’t come back. He had to face the truth. He couldn’t keep pretending he would.

It simply hurt too much.

So instead of going home and lay awake in his bed for hours as usual he suddenly found himself standing in the entrance of a pub.

It was a rather busy establishment and one of the kinds that John would usually not frequent. He knew that the people sitting at the tables and in corner booths were the type of people that usually avoided broad daylight and preferred to work in the helpful darkness of the night. He could tell by the way they looked at him, how talks suddenly turned hush-hush and a few gazed at him with a hostile expression in their eyes.

‘Are you a copper, boy?’ was the unasked question, which was hanging in the air.

John knew he should have turned around and simply left again but instead he headed over to the bar, ordering himself a large beer, carrying the heavy mug over to a corner. There was only one person sitting at the small table but with their head almost resting on their chest, John assumed they were asleep or drunk. Or possibly both.

“Excuse me, but is this seat taken?”

John waited and the man only made a short gesture which was obviously a ‘no’. Sitting down on the other side of the table he set his glass down, sighing a bit. What was he doing here? He didn’t want to look to the answer to that question because he already knew it.

“Didn’t think I would meet you here, Doctor John Watson.”

Johns body stiffened and he hastily turned his head to the man he had thought drunk or half asleep. To his surprise his neighbor was neither drunk nor was he even tired looking. Instead he found himself gazing into a pair of steely grey eyes, that examined him quietly, an amused glint in them as if John was some funny looking zoo creature.

“How… Have we met before?” the doctor stammered, looking the stranger over. He was wearing an army styled jacket, the zipper pulled halfway down, revealing a simple black shirt underneath and a silver chain with something dangling from it. Dog tags? The man himself was tall, broad shouldered but not massive. His hair was of a short, messy blonde, the rest of the features of his face lost in the dim light. Only those eyes of his seemed to pierce through, still watching the doctor.

“Not in person, no.” was the strangers reply which confused John quite a bit. When the man continued though he felt his blood run cold.

“But I have seen you in the cross hair of my scope. You’ve been looking lonely, Doctor Watson.”

John felt his throat tighten as he stared at the stranger. He wanted to ask ‘Who are you?’ but the words died on his lips. And deep down inside he felt he already knew the answer.

The other mans lips twisted into a wide grin.

“I hope I didn’t scare you out of your mind, doctor. But then…I know you’re a strong man. You are not scared easily.”

He nodded his head to John in a greeting way.

“Colonel Sebastian Moran, at your service.”

Colonel? John eyed the dog tags that were glinting in what little light there was.

“Afghanistan.” Sebastian said as if he had been reading Johns mind. “Just like you. You were part of the medical services, weren’t you?”

In Johns mind something clicked and he suddenly found himself pulling out a piece of a mosaic that had been long forgotten. Moran’s name rang a bell although he wasn’t sure if he was just remembering things wrongly.

“I’m no longer with the army.” Moran chuckled, lifting his glass, sipping from its content. Vodka? Whiskey? “They didn’t like my style too much, I guess. You were in a different unit I believe.”

Again John had the strange feeling that Moran knew much more about him than he knew about the other man and that was rather unnerving.

“I once took care of a man who got beaten up by his officer in charge during a combat mission.” John started.

Moran nodded solemnly.

“He didn’t duck fast enough, that moron.” he said, turning his glass in his hands, “even a rookie knows that when you’re being shot at you duck. And you don’t just stand there like Rambo and fire off your gun at an invisible enemy. I had to teach him a lesson.”

“You broke three of his ribs and almost dislocated his jaw.” John saw the picture clearly in his mind now.

The man had been scared senseless, whispering, begging John to make sure that the tiger would not find him.

And now John remembered everything. There had been a man they had called the Tiger of the Mountains. And that he had been dishonorably discharged from services. The last thing he had heard of him was that he left Afghanistan.

Where he had met Jim Moriarty. And had become his right hand man. His loyal sniper. The one who had his gun trained on John right before…

A choked sound escaped John’s throat and for a moment he felt the urge to leap up and punch Moran in the face. To blame everything on him. To silence those voices in his head that whispered to him Sherlock’s last words.

“How did you do it?” Moran suddenly asked, staring at a point behind Johns head as if he couldn’t see the inner struggle John was in. But maybe he simply didn’t care. John blinked at that question, frowning as he tried to understand it.

“What do you mean?”

“How did you cope with his madness? Holmes, I mean. How did you manage not to smack him across the face whenever he started doing weird shit?”

The frown on John’s forehead deepened.

“Sherlock wasn’t mad.”

The answer was a sudden burst of laughter and heads turned quickly towards them. Moran shook his head slowly afterwards, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Don’t tell me Holmes was the epitome of sanity. I bet he too kept fingers in a jar of pickles.”

John shook his head, mind suddenly feeling numb.

“No. But eyeballs. He had eyeballs in his fridge.”

“Eyeballs? That’s a nice one. I remember Jim gave me some as a gift once.” Moran’s grin seemed genuinely happy and it made John shudder inside. “Jim loved to play with things. He once wanted to see how many acupuncture needles one would need to kill a man.”

“Sherlock blow torched a pig head in the kitchen once. The smell was awful. We couldn’t get rid of it for weeks.”

“Jim tried to replicate the Schroedinger’s Cat experiment. Never thought those buggers could smell what was going to happen. The beast scratched my arms up well. Jim teased me about the scars for months, that smug little bastard.”

“”Sherlock decided he had to see the possible effects of alcohol on a superior mind like his. He was puking his heart out afterwards and I had to hold his hair and clean up the mess while he was sick for days.”

The entire conversation had officially reached some sort of unreal twilight zone.

“One of Jim’s hobbies is to collect photos of the people he or I shot. Mostly of those I shot.”

“Sherlock kept a human skull on the mantelpiece of our fireplace.”

“Jim wrote a book about poisonous plants. I bet he tested the effects of each in one of his creepy experiments. I read in the newspapers quite a few homeless people were missing afterwards.”

“Sherlock wrote a book about the analysis of tobacco ash. An entire 300 pages book!”

John felt out of breath as if he was running for his life. His heart was beating way too fast while the two juggled sentences between each other, bouncing words around, searching for another crazy thing Moriarty or Holmes had done.

“I tried to teach Jim that a gun is not a toy. He liked to poke me with it when he got bored. Sometimes I’d wake up and he was sitting next to me, grinning like the damn Cheshire cat, holding his gun up to my face, finger on the trigger.”

“I tried to teach Sherlock about the solar system and its importance and impact on our daily life. After three weeks he’d still mix up Mars, Mercury and the Moon. How could a brilliant man be so…dense?”

“At least he’d leave you out of his sick experiments.”

John shook his head, grinning like a loon now.

“I wish. Once he made me wear a sweater while it was the hottest day of the year to take the time and see how long it would take for me to pass out from the heat. Luckily I managed to stop him in the middle of it.”

“Oh yeah? Jim made me wear a maid’s outfit and fucked me in it.”

“What?”

This time the expression on Johns face was a different one. He didn’t look shocked as much as flustered as his cheeks turned a dark hot crimson color. It was quite…adorable.

Seb gave him a crooked smiled.

“You know… One of those black dresses with an apron and frilly arms…”

“Yes, yes, I know what a maid’s uniform is but… Why?”

Moran started to laugh again and this time John felt as if he was laughing about him, causing him to cross his arms, face darkening a bit. He couldn’t see how his words had been funny in any way.

“So, I guess that means you and Holmes never…”

Moran left the rest unspoken then his face grew serious all of sudden as he took another sip of his glass.

“Why? Because he was Jim. He did what he wanted. And he made sure people around him did want the same thing he did. I would have done anything for him. Just like you would have done anything for Holmes.”

John shook his head, arms still crossed as if he suddenly needed a natural barrier between himself and the sniper.

“You shot people for him.” he said coldly, eyes narrowed as if he had to make clear that he and Moran were nothing alike.

“You did too. Just one but you would have shot more if you had thought it was necessary.”

John’s expression slipped and his face turned pale.

“How…how did you..?”

“Jim Moriarty knew everything. About you, about Holmes. In the end it didn’t matter though.”

John fell silent, watching the other man, seeing the tension in his face, how he was grinding his teeth, jaw muscles straining, most likely mulling over the same things that had brought the Doctor here in the first place.

With bitterness both men realized how alike Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty had been. How –as insane as it sounded- they had needed each other. How neither he nor Moran could be enough for them. Couldn’t reach them. Couldn’t understand them.

How there just had not been any other outcome possible to this story of two brilliant men.

Sebastian Moran’s face slowly relaxed again and he took a deep breath, emptying his glass, shoving it slowly aside.

“Holmes had a nice funeral. I liked Mycroft’s speech.”

John flinched a bit but didn’t comment Moran’s words. He shouldn’t be surprised that the sniper had been on Sherlock’s funeral. Maybe to give his regards instead of Jim. Jim would have liked the thought of Sebastian shaking Watsons hand and whispering to him ‘Jim says he’s sorry for your loss, Johnny-boy.’

“Where is Jim buried?”

Moran seemed surprised by the question but he only shook his head slowly.

“You know I won’t tell you. They wouldn’t even let me get his body. But I made sure he got a nice quiet spot. I just don’t like the tomb stone.”

John raised a brow, fighting his curiosity and losing the struggle.

“Why? What does it say?”

Sebastian’s grin returned, creeping over his face but this time it wasn’t a good natured one. It was filled with the sort of dark malice that had surrounded Jim Moriarty.

“It says: Here lays Richard Brook. Beloved actor and friend. We will never forget you and your laughter.”

For a long moment there was nothing but silence between them, even though the pub was filled with that low murmur of people talking and the sound of footsteps and clinking glasses.

Sebastian Moran slowly got up.

„Jim needed Holmes. And in a way Holmes needed Jim. They were like matter and anti matter. They shouldn’t have met but they were pulling each other in. Just to explode in a supernova that left us in its wake.”

He looked over to John who rose from his seat as well.

“We should do this again some time.” John said before realizing the meaning of his words a moment too late. One shouldn’t go for a drink with a killer for hire. But for that brief moment his words had been genuine.

He could see in Moran’s eyes that the tall sniper had realized that and acknowledged it with a quiet smile. Then Sebastian shook his head.

“No we won’t. We will never meet again, John Watson. You will go back to your hospital and save life. And I will move on, get a new employer and send people your way for you to save. Or they might end up straight in the mortuary.”

He stepped in front of John, body tensing up, standing to attention before he raised his hand to salute the other man briefly.

“It was an honor meeting you, Doctor John Watson.”

John returned the salute, nodding only in reply.

Then he watched Moran turn away from him, heading for the exit of the pub. He was walking in the way of a man who was carrying a heavy burden on his shoulders but tried his best not to let it push him down on his knees.

In this moment John knew that everything would be alright. He would be alright.

Holmes would not come back. But he would be with him. Every day of his life.


End file.
